Trump to visit younger brother in the hospital

President Trump will visit his brother Robert Trump in the hospital on Friday prior to spending the weekend at his club in Bedminster, N.J., a White House spokesman confirmed.

Robert Trump is hospitalized in New York City, White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said. His condition, which was first reported by ABC News, was not immediately clear. ABC reported that Robert had been in the intensive care unit at Mount Sinai Hospital for more than a week in June. 

The White House did not provide further details on the president’s visit, but he is scheduled to depart the White House around 2 p.m.

“I have a wonderful brother. We’ve had a great relationship from day one,” Trump told reporters during a press briefing before he left the White House.

“He’s in the hospital right now and hopefully he’ll be all right,” he added. “But he’s having a hard time.”

Robert Trump is the president’s younger brother. He recently was in the news for his role in a lawsuit seeking to stop the publication of a book by their niece, Mary Trump, that was sharply critical of the president and the Trump family as a whole.

Robert Trump said in a statement in June that he was “deeply disappointed” in his niece’s decision to write “Too Much and Never Enough.”

A New York judge later threw out the lawsuit, and the book was released on July 14. It paints an unflattering picture of the Trump family, and of the president in particular. The president’s niece describes him as a serial liar and alleges that Robert and Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was a “high-functioning sociopath” who created an “atmosphere of division” among his children.

Updated at 1:49 p.m.